Pain and triumph swept through Susan. “If he left once there’s a good chance he’ll leave again. You made the wise decision, even if it hurts....”
“I made a cowardly decision, just as I did thirty years ago,” Mary said bitterly. “I sent him away in the first place. I kept him out of our life, because he drank too much. He’s been sober ever since, for more than twenty-five years, and yet I’m afraid to trust him. Afraid to go against my parents’ wishes, even . though they’ve been dead for more than twenty years. I wanted him to come back, but there was no way I could ask him. Not after refusing to talk with him for years.”
“So why not now? Why send him away now?”
“Because I’m afraid. I’m not like your aunt Lou,” she said. “I don’t have the nerve to throw everything away for love. And I’m afraid you’re just like me.”
“But Aunt Lou didn’t throw everything away for love, did she?” Susan demanded. “You told me she married Ned Marsden and died. Didn’t she?”
Mary didn’t answer. “I’m going to lie down for a while. I don’t want to think about...”
“When did he leave?”
Mary shook her head. “His flight left this morning. He begged me to let him stay but I told him no.”
“You could go after him.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. I made the wise decision.”
“You made the stupid decision,” Susan said flatly. “Your sister would be ashamed of you. I’m ashamed of you. Go after him. Catch the next flight to wherever it is he lives, show up on his doorstep wrapped in Saran Wrap and beg his forgiveness. Tell him you made a mistake, and if he still loves you you’ll never leave him again.”
An odd expression came into Mary’s eyes. “What’s gotten into you? You’ve always been so careful, so determined to make the wise decision.”
“I’m making the wise decision. I’m not marrying Edward.”
“Thank God,” Mary breathed.
“And I’m sending you after the man you love. Once you get there it’s up to you not to screw it up, but I’m not letting you use me as an excuse. Go after him. Don’t waste the rest of your life.”
Mary stood stock-still, watching her. And suddenly twenty years fell off her, like a blanket, and she smiled a dazzling smile. She threw her arms around Susan with an exuberance almost foreign to her nature. A moment later she was racing out the front door.
The house grew still and quiet around her. She turned off the telephone, locked the doors and stretched out on the living room sofa, Tallulah’s satin gown draped around her. She could only hope Edward had done something about canceling the wedding. Otherwise four hundred guests were converging on St. Anne’s Episcopal Church, and there’d be no bride.
Like her mother before her, she’d sent away the right man. And there was nothing she could do about it.
She watched the hands on the grandfather clock move inexorably onward. The clock had come from the old house, as well—she remembered Ridley setting it. It moved past five, then five-thirty, and she breathed a deep sigh of relief. Wondering, why she still felt so empty inside.
It was after six when she heard the rumble of the car in the driveway. It sounded like the little sports car that Jake had been driving, and she froze, until she heard the key in the door. She didn’t move from her spot on the sofa. Only her mother had a key to. the house—she must have chickened out at the last minute. Maybe the two of them could be tiresome old maids together, sharing a house and an empty life.
But it wasn’t her mother’s footsteps in the hall, moving with slow, stately care toward the living room. A figure appeared in the shadows at the entranceway, tall, stooped with age but still graceful, and Susan stared at her in shock.
“So I travel halfway around the world just for the chance of disrupting another wedding at St Anne’s, and it’s all for nothing,” the old lady said in a tart, deep voice. “Obviously you have more sense than your mother gave you credit for.” She moved into the room, an ebony cane in one gnarled hand, and went straight to the huge leather chair, sinking down with a faint grunt. “I always hated this chair,” she said in a conversational voice.
Susan stared at her, unable to move. She was a very old woman, her silvery hair piled high on her aristocratic head, her dark eyes bright with intelligence and the wisdom of age.
“Who are you?” Susan’s voice came out in a shocked croak But she already knew the answer.
The old lady let out a bark of laughter. “That dress looks almost as good on you as it did on me. Though some might call it unlucky. This is the second wedding that didn’t go through. Make sure your mother doesn’t want to borrow it when she remarries your father, or she might be doomed.”
Susan sat up, staring in shock. “Aunt Lou?”
“Of course. Or your godmother Louisa, if you prefer.”
“But you’re dead. You died in a train crash the day you married Neddie Marsden.”
“I never married Neddie. I took off in the middle of the service and went after the man I loved. Of course the family covered it all up with a bunch of lies, and after fifty years not too many people know or care about the truth. Your uncle Jack and I were married on board the Lizzie B. and we never spent a night apart for the last forty-eight years until he died.”
“I’m sorry,” Susan murmured.
